Tea Party Time In Minnesota

I attended the tea party at Minnesota’s State Capitol in St. Paul tonight. It was a fun event, partly because it was our most beautiful evening of the spring. The crowd was impressive. I’m no judge of crowd size, but it was announced at 8,000-10,000. That might be a little high, but is probably in the ballpark. The crowd was more fun-loving than rowdy, and the speakers, for the most part, more academic than rabble-rousing. But, hey: it’s Minnesota.

I made this movie that sums up the event pretty well, I think. The video is embeddable, so if you want to put it up on your site, go ahead:

Now for some photos. This one shows the crowd near the front as the rally was getting underway; click all photos to enlarge:

Like other tea parties, this one featured home-made signs:

This was taken from the middle of the crowd, early in the event. I like the “chains you can believe in:”

Another view of the crowd, off to the side:

Another sign I liked; also, note the Heritage graph that we and others have publicized:

This one gives a sense of the overall size of the crowd, and the beauty of Minnesota’s State Capitol:

No comment needed on this one:

I love this sign, held by a young kid, and how the photo turned out–inadvertently artistic:

Another sign:

Lots of flags were in evidence, including several large “don’t tread on me” banners:

Another nice home-made sign points out that “messiahs” are more expensive than they used to be. And less effectual:

Finally, this one looks out on the crowd from a spot near the stairs to the Capitol:

It was a beautiful evening and a successful event. Are the tea parties the start of something big? We’ll see. But one thing we know for sure is that they are making the establishment very nervous.

UPDATE: We got some great photos of other tea parties from readers, but it’s gotten a little late, and I’ll put some of those up tomorrow.